I’ve found that a successful Internet businesses must start with a solid foundation. As I’ve seen, most Internet businesses will integrate a blog onto their website and start to build a solid foundation of pillar content. Pillar content or pillar articles are posts that are written to help a consumer establish what your Internet business is all about.

What Is Pillar Content?

This termed was first coined by a famous blogger called Yaro Starak at his website Entrepreneur’s Journey. Yaro provides the following detailed definition:

“A pillar is blog content, usually an article, which does some very important things:

• It will bring in a rush of new readers and backlinks (other sites linking to your blog).
• It will continue to bring in more readers over time as you and other people refer to it, even though it may be buried in the archives of your blog.
• Eventually it will bring in traffic from search engines (this is largely because so many other web pages link to it).
• You can list it in a separate area (like an articles page) with all your other pillars so your best content can easily be accessed and your value clearly demonstrated.
• It is not time dependent, so in twelve months’ time it will still be relevant and popular.”

Why Is Pillar Content Important?

Looking at the bigger picture, pillar content is your foundation of your Internet business as it will continue to bring consumers and readers to your website. You may think that just having a product or service to sell is all that’s needed to run a successful business. Not quite so. Consumers today are very hungry for information and want to know more about your business. Therefore providing pillar content relating to your products or services can add value for your consumers and generate more sales for you.

For example, if I were selling a watch online and it had a description and listed features, it may not be enough for a consumer to purchase the watch from my site. Reason being, most people would want to read reviews from others who have purchased this watch and see their feedback. What if I wrote an article about the watch talking about the history and make of it and asked an expert to state their opinion, and had other consumers respond with comments and feedback. Then this would provide social proof and adds value to your product without the consumer leaving your site and spending time looking for more information elsewhere.

Examples Of  Pillar Content

Most pillar content articles are longer than 500 words and have lots of practical tips or advice. There are many different forms of pillar content you can create and I have listed some examples below for you to apply to your industry:

1. How To Article – shows people how to do a certain task or instructions on building something
2. Definition Article – defines a term in your industry
3. Present A Theory Or Argument – writing to present some unique thought
4. Release A Significant Resource – a report, podcast, video
5. A “List” Article – it’s very easy to scan and share. Can be a top 10 list or action points
6. Technical Or Visual Guide – a screen capture presentation or how to fix something using a video presentation. It is also a very detailed step by step blueprint on exactly how to complete a task.

I’ve seen how effective pillar content can be for any Internet business and I recommend you have at least 10 pillar articles on your website before marketing to consumers. That way you’ll provide them with something valuable to read and also gain their interest to come back again. If you can write an article each day using the above examples, then you can build a very strong foundation for your Internet business.

Tyrone Shum
Pillar Article Writer